Advances in computer technology and the general mobility of users and expansiveness of corporate enterprises have generally contributed to the increase in computer applications in various industries in order to provide more efficient and effective communications and data handling. Server systems are utilized in ways that improve the efficiency and reliability in not only making information available but also communicating information between servers.
A database is an organized collection of information with data structured such that a program can quickly search and select desired pieces of data, for example. In many deployments, the database is distributed across many machines for access and reliability.
A federation is collection of nodes that are part of a distributed system, where one node does not necessarily know about some or all the other nodes. In such a scenario, a problem exists in the reliable communications (e.g., broadcast) of data (e.g., a message) in a way that ensures that all the nodes that are alive at a particular time in the distributed system receive the message.